According a report of a research funded by the United States government, more than 80 percent of the roughly two million people struggling with opioid addiction in the United States are not being treated with the medications most likely to nudge them into remission or prevent them from overdosing. This finding according to the authors of the report is a serious ethical breach in the criminal justice system and the health care providers responsible for the reduction of opioid related deaths.
Three medications – ethadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone had been approves by The Food and Drug Administration to treat opioid use disorder. These medications work by binding to the brain’s opiate receptors in a way that reduces the cravings that people addicted to drugs like OxyContin and heroin experience, but without causing the same euphoric high as those drugs. Methadone and buprenorphine have proved especially effective. Patients who take one of those medications are half as likely to die from their addiction; they are also more likely to stay in treatment, and they tend to have better long-term health outcomes.
The medications has been around for a while now, methadone was approved in 1972 while buprenorphine in 2002. In some countries, deaths resulting from opioid overdose had been reduces significantly as a result of access to these medications. For instance in France policies that enabled more doctors to prescribe buprenorphine helped lead to a tenfold increase in the number of people whose opioid use disorder was being treated and to a nearly 80 percent decline in overdose deaths in just four years.
But sadly, many drug courts and most residential treatment programs in the United States prevent participants from using these medications; and the rehabilitation programs that do offer them rarely offer all three options. It had been noted that the treatments are not available in most emergency rooms, they are also not available in most prisons, even though a significant portion of the federal inmate population suffers from opioid use disorder.
The limited access to these medications in the United State can be attributed to stigma and a profound lack of awareness. Methadone and buprenorphine are opioids. They are weaker than drugs like OxyContin, fentanyl and heroin that have fueled the current crisis, but many law enforcement and medical professionals still see them as trading one addiction for another. Or they mistakenly believe that the medications should be used only temporarily, to help wean patients off stronger opioids. Or they see them as an optional complement to behavioral interventions instead of an essential component of opioid addiction management. Regrettably none of these perceptions is supported by the balance of scientific evidence.
There is also a logistical barrier to getting these drugs into the hands of people who need them. Doctors are allowed to give methadone only at specialized clinics where patients must report every day for their dose. Lines at such clinics are often long, and according to the report, which came from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, Medicaid does not cover the treatment in at least 14 states.
Buprenorphine is available by prescription, but health care professionals must obtain a special license to write those prescriptions, a process that requires them to complete hours of additional training, grant the Drug Enforcement Administration access to all of their patient records and agree to strict limits on the number of patients they can treat with the medication. In many states, would-be buprenorphine prescribers also must submit to stringent criteria for insurance reimbursement. These restrictions also are not justified by scientific evidence. They are not employed by other countries, and they are not used to manage the treatment of other chronic medical conditions in the United States.
Fewer than seven percent of the nation’s doctors have gone through the trouble of clearing these hurdles. As a result, more than half of all counties have no licensed buprenorphine prescriber at all. That’s too bad. According to the national academies report, just about anyone with opioid use disorder — teenagers, pregnant women, people with other serious medical conditions — can be treated safely and effectively with the medication.
